What Sport’s Emphasis On The Team Can Teach Business

If productivity in the U.K.’s workplaces is not what it might have been today it might be wise to not assume it was due to the Monday blues. Instead, employees might just have been exhausted by a glorious weekend of sport.

Yesterday saw Manchester United defeat their arch rivals Liverpool in a thrilling FA Cup match that even the most devoted supporter of the former would not have expected them to win because of the supposed gulf in quality between the two clubs. The passion and verve displayed by some of the young players in a United team that has been slated for another indifferent season was extraordinary and rendered such comparisons invalid. Now that they have shown what their under-pressure manager Erik ten Hag called their “strong belief” the big question will be whether they can maintain it. But for now, they can relish the fact that they pulled off a bold plan and so have restored hope — that most important commodity in the workplace or on the sports field.

Meanwhile, Saturday was dominated by the final day of rugby union’s Six Nations Championship. Although it rarely features the world’s top-ranked teams (you generally have to head for the Southern Hemisphere to see them), this annual contest between England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France and Italy never fails to throw up surprises — and although the pre-tournament favorites eventually prevailed, their passage to the title was not altogether smooth. Not least because last weekend they were derailed by an England team that — rather like Manchester United — few had given any chance of winning and that had — despite making the most of a favourable draw to come third at last autumn’s World Cup — been underachieving for some time. To be fair to Ireland, they had no way of seeing that performance coming. So, how did it happen?

Oddly, it appears to have had its origins in an error-strewn defeat at the hands of Scotland. In such circumstances, it would have been understandable for the England coaching team to have reacted to the team’s apparent inability to play attacking rugby by adopting a more limited, safety-first policy and seek to contain an Ireland team that had looked unstoppable. Instead, they backed themselves and the players to put aside the mistakes and perform in the way that the coaches were confident they were capable of doing.

That they pulled it off is what makes sport so compelling — and also so instructive for other aspects of our lives, especially business. As Bob Skinstad, a former captain of South Africa’s national rugby team, the Springboks, who is now a partner with the management consultancy Elixirr, says, the lessons for business from sport are not the obvious ones of rousing speeches and leading from the front. They are much more nuanced messages about teamwork, accountability and responsibility, particularly when things go wrong. He points out that the relationships between sports teams and their fans and similar to those between a business and its investors.

It is not clear whether the England head coach Steve Borthwick sees matters like this. But some of the things he and Jamie George, who took over as captain following the decision of Owen Farrell to step back from international rugby, have done in recent weeks suggest a similar line of thinking. George has led his players through the crowd at one of the home fixtures in a clear attempt to reconnect with fans, while Borthwick, has called the supporters who not so long ago were a long way from engaged with the team “magnificent.”

But the real difference that Borthwick and his coaching team, after a slow start, appear to have brought about is a focus on making progress and learning from mistakes — again, things that are important for business. Professional sports people often talk about fine margins. So, yes, there were plenty of errors in the game against Scotland, but they came about through trying new things. Another week on the training field and the winning performance against Ireland was the result. A reminder of how fine those margins can be came at the weekend when England were not quite able to hold out against a French team that also had a lot to prove. Just as sports teams are rarely as brilliant as their admirers claim when they are winning and often not as bad as they appear to be when losing, so companies need to understand that the perception of them does not have to stand. They can move from the under-performers to the over-achievers if they make the effort and work hard at the right things.

How they go about this is crucial. Companies increasingly talk about values, mission statements, purpose and the like. But these things are worthless if they are just words rather than principles they live by. This is another area where sports teams can teach business a thing or two. In the best teams, each player knows his or her role — in rugby it is more obvious than in some other sports because of the range of physiques involved, but the idea holds true throughout. And in the best teams, every player — even or especially the stars — know that they are not bigger than the team. Skinstad offers an example of this when he talks about the principle the South Africa players introduced that said that if you were not fit to train on the Monday you could not play the following weekend. When coaches have tried to bend the rule, to allow key players to return from injury, the players themselves have rejected the overture — pointing to the need to retain team unity, he says. This demonstrated that the principle was now pervasive. Compare that with those businesses who continue to promote people who make lots of money while not living up the values that their employers say they espouse.